Category Archives: Documenting America

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, Documenting America, self-publishing

One Book at a Time

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Today I attended a meeting at the City of Centerton, Arkansas—a simple preconstruction conference for a small project at First Baptist Church in Centerton, to add a baseball/softball field on vacant land next to the church. The contractor is a man who used to work for us; the engineer is one I’ve worked with for a long time.

As I drove to the meeting, I saw that I had two copies of Documenting America in the pick-up. When I got to City Hall I took a copy of the book. Upon seeing my contractor friend, I asked him, “You got a spare $10.90? I think you’ll like this,” and I handed him a copy of the book. He said he would take a copy, but that he didn’t have any money on him at the moment. His coworker also looked interested.

It was during the meeting that he said he didn’t have the money right then. So I took the book from him and gave it to the engineer, saying, “Maybe you’d like this.” She seemed impressed that I’d published a book, and said she wanted to buy one for her husband. When I told her it was available as an e-book for 1/5th the price, she said that’s how she’d buy it. I hope she follows through.

So I gave the book back to my contractor friend, and said he could pay me later. I kiddingly reminded him that I have to sign off on the project, and that he needed to pay me before I did the final inspection.

That’s the way book sales seem to go these days: one sale at a time, mostly at my efforts. Writing is a hard business, the sale of one’s writings harder yet. Yesterday “Too Old To Play” went live at the Kindle store. So far I have two e-sales of it, and it stands about 58,500 in the Kindle store, but will sink fast unless there are more sales. I’m okay with the start. The two sales probably came from people I know, somewhere, who bought it in response to my notices on my blogs, on Facebook, at Ozark Writers League, or at Christian Authors Book Marketing Strategies. I’d be shocked if they were bought by strangers who stumbled upon the title at Amazon.

So my sales and revenue for January 2012 stand at 7 and $6.36 respectively, with 3.5 days left in the month. I’m okay with that. I might get a boost on Monday Jan 30, when “Mom’s Letter” will be the featured short story at the Short Story Symposium. That may generate some sales, and if any of those buyers go to my Amazon page and see I have another short story in the series…who knows? I reached out to TSSS in late December, and am pleased it worked out.

One book at a time. That appears to be the rule in these early days in the brave new world of eSP—e-self-publishing. Will it ever move beyond that? I hope so.

Documenting America, flood studies, Genealogy, goals, The Candy Store Generation

2012 Writing Plan: Non-Fiction Books

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In addition to the non-fiction articles I mentioned in the previous post, I’ve also thought of and plan to work on some non-fiction book projects during 2012. One for sure, and three probable, are what I’m thinking of. I suppose, if I could become really, really productive, I might be able to write a fourth one as well. For all of these, I plan on self-publish.

  1. The Candy Store Generation is my first project, already started, but not very much done. This will be a political book. The Candy Store Generation is the Baby Boomers, and I’m convinced they (we) are ruining America. We are now in charge of business and industry, are the majority of teachers in the schools and universities, are in charge of the Congress, States, and local governments. And the USA is in decline. Could it be that the Boomers are at fault? I think so, and this book will show it. Status: I have written only about 4000 or so words on the way to 40,000 words. I have some research to do on the makeup of Congress, which I have started but am only 10 percent done with. Since this is an election year, I’d like to have this done and available by about May, but that is perhaps too ambitious.
  2. I have done much research into my wife’s paternal immigrant ancestor, John Cheney of Newbury, Massachusetts. He came to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635. I have an eleven page document of facts and figures that I would like to flesh out into about a 40-50 page biography. I have in my hands three or four histories of Newbury, which I can use to fill in something about his times. I also can take the bare facts and turn them into narrative. In fact, I started this at one time, and should be able to find it on a computer some where. Why do this? John Cheney has many descendants, many of whom are studying their genealogy. I encounter them on message boards all the time. Much misinformation has been posted on-line about John Cheney, and it would be nice to correct it. Also genealogy books sell for a good premium compared to books as a whole. A 50 page e-book would sell for at least $4.00, in print for $10.00. The cover wouldn’t be important. I have no schedule for this, as I’d like to see how other projects, already scheduled, go first.
  3. I have a number of articles written about floodplain engineering that would form the basis of a decent book. But the key thing I would put in this book is Federal floodplain regulations, and format and annotate them in a way to make them more useful than as they are published by the Feds and commented on by FEMA. I think it would be a 60-80 page book. I don’t know what I’ll do with this. It seems like a good idea, and would sell for a good price relative to its length. I just don’t know if I would have the time for this, or if the good price will offset the relatively small audience for this subject.
  4. A fourth work that has come to mind is a second book in the Documenting America series. I’ve already done some of the research for this. I would probably make it more time-limited, probably to the Civil War years: before, during, and after. I’ve already gathered some material for this, and may have written part of a chapter. You might wonder why I would write a second Documenting America book when the first has sold a grand total of 27 copies in eight months. I would answer: because I can and want to. It is a way for me to study history and get paid for it. How sweet is that! If I do this, it would most likely be at the expense of some other project.

Well, those are my plans, or a combination of plans and hopes/dreams. We’ll see how many of these non-fiction book projects actually come to pass.

Documenting America, non-fiction, The Candy Store Generation

2011 Writing Year in Review: Non-fiction Books

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Just before our Christmas trip I wrote out a schedule of posts for this blog that would take me through around January 13. Today I find myself two days and one post behind, the consequence of spending time with family over Christmas. I don’t regret the time, nor the need to catch up. But family is still in town, activities are still planned at least through January 2, so I’m not sure when, if ever, I will catch up.

The good news is: It doesn’t matter if I ever catch up. A day late, two days late, a week late, or even not posted at all, doesn’t much matter. Today I’ll at least begin the catch-up and see where it goes.

Reviewing 2011, in the area of non-fiction, book-length works, I had only one: Documenting America. I have other posts on this blog where I explain how and why this volume came into being, so I won’t take up valuable pixels to repeat that here. I will say what prompted me to finish it and publish it in 2011.

Back in January 2011, when I made the decision that I would e-self-publish some of my works (while not completely severing the dream to have something accepted at a traditional publisher) to test the process, I figured my completed short story, “Mom’s Letter”, was the perfect item to start with. I could practice formatting and uploading. I could see what went into having a cover made. I could see what it was like to track the work once it was live on line.

Then I looked at what to do next. I could have gone to my completed novel, Doctor Luke’s Assistant, but that didn’t seem right. I had these 18 or so newspaper columns I had written, only four of which I had published, or that I even tried to have published. I decided they could serve as the basis for a book. Lengthen each of the 18 to what I wanted them to be without the constraints of newspaper column-inches. Add to them until I had 40,000 words, and eSP it. The research, writing, and editing consumed March and April. By early May it was available as a Kindle book, though it took a little longer to attach the real cover.

Having got that far, I took another two months, with many other life issues getting in the way, to format the book for Smashwords and have it added there. CreateSpace took some more months, with the cover modification being one problem.

During all this time, I was thinking of what to do as a follow-up to Documenting America. I began research for a second volume (in fact, I almost called DA Volume 1), and have material in hand to generate at least 10,000 words. I also began writing a different, though sort of related work tentatively titled The Candy Store Generation. This is based on blog posts I made at a friend’s political blog about the Baby Boomers and how they (we) are not improving the United States. I pulled those blog posts together, and added some additional material. I believe it stands at about 5,000 words, needing to get to at least 30,000 words to be a viable book. I also did some research into the make-up of Congress, when the House of Representatives tipped to being dominated by the Baby Boomers. This turned out to be slow going, but I have the research started and well organized.

That’s it for non-fiction books in 2011. The next year-in-review post will be fiction of all types.

Documenting America

Experimenting with Price

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E-self-publishing guru Joe Konrath recently had a guest post on his blog, by Elle Lothlorien, concerning pricing for self-published e-books. Elle recommends higher prices for self-published e-books than has been the conventional wisdom in the community. Joe has recommended $2.99; Elle recommends closer to $4.99. Joe responded by saying he’s starting to agree with that sentiment, and is raising some of his prices accordingly. The comments to the post seem to favor the higher prices.

But at a higher price, won’t they sell fewer books? Maybe. But people, i.e. Americans, also have a perception about price and value being linked. Something that is terribly inexpensive, well below the going value, will be seen to be cheap and thought to be of a lesser quality. Think yard sales and thrift shops. While some good quality bargains can be had, these generally have heavily used merchandise of inferior quality. You’ll find better stuff at consignment shops, but still not of the quality as at stores that sell new stuff.

So I began thinking about the price of Documenting America. I initially set it at $1.25, as an introductory price, thinking if sales took off I could raise it some. It’s not a long book at 196 pages, so I wanted to keep the price attractive. Why then $1.25 and not $0.99? Only because those .99 prices always seem cheesy to me, gimicky. I’d rather pay $1.00 than $0.99. So I set the price at $1.25. But when I listed the book on Smashwords, they only allow prices that end in $0.99. Since Amazon doesn’t allow you to list it for less at any other place, I set the Smashwords price at $1.99. At that price I have one sale, via the Barnes & Noble Nook store.

Several people have told me that the book was way under-priced at $1.25, suggesting something like $3.99 would be better. The print version sells for $10.00, which will net me $0.58 per sale at Amazon, about $2.58 at CreateSpace, and almost $4.00 on self-sales. So I pondered whether I should raise my price, despite lack of sales.

Today I decided to raise the price. Although I don’t like x.99 pricing, if people expect that, I’ll give it to them. So the new price of Documenting America is now $1.99—or it will be as soon as it makes its way through the Kindle approval system.

Now, I’m not naive enough to think that a simple price chage, especially an increase, will suddenly spur sales. But maybe some people looked at the lower price and said, “I’m not buying something that cheap,” or “That guy must be desperate for sales.”  $1.99 doesn’t imply much more value than does $1.25. It is, however, a more expected price in the American market. “Meet expectations” is a good marketing mantra, I think. We’ll see what happens.

Tomorrow I’m going to post my sales graph and let the world see how little I’ve sold and how little I make.

Documenting America

Let the Promotion Continue

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I don’t like it, but I’m doing it. Promotion, that is. Of Documenting America. I describes some of my efforts in my last post, and the difficulty I’m having accepting the unnatural role of promoter.

Today I took another small step. On the way to my writers group I stopped by the Bentonville Public LIbrary and gave them a copy of the book. Thus it is out before the public now—or will be as soon as they log it in, categorize it as to Dewey Decimal numbers, and get it on the shelf. I suppose I’ll go there in about a week and see if I can find it in the catalogue and on the shelf, or better yet, learn it’s been checked out.

One other piece of promotion shows some hope, if not yet sales. I sent a notice to the URI alumni magazine to go in the Class Notes section. One of the staffers e-mailed me, saying that they thought an engineer with literary aspirations was an interesting story, that they’d like to do a feature story on me for the spring issue, and that a certain freelancer will contact me.

Will this actually happen? Will someone ever contact me? Will they actually write the story and print it? And if they do, will it generate any sales? I don’t know those answers, but I do know this: If they print it, it can’t hurt.

Documenting America, Writing

Promoting my Books: Do I have enough ego?

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Now that the print version of Documenting America is available, I’m moving into the promotion phase of being an author. It has been available as an e-book since May 2011, and as a print book since mid-November 2011. My short story, “Mom’s Letter”, has been available as an e-book since February. During that time, on Kindle, Smashwords, and the several other sites to which Smashwords distributes, I’ve sold a total 23 copies of the two.

Sometimes I note a sale the day after I’ve spoken to someone about it. When I went to the state ASCE conference in Little Rock in October, I had dinner with an old friend, told him about it, and the next day had an e-sale. In November I mentioned something about it to someone (the circumstances escape me right now), and the next day I had an e-sale. It seems that, at this point at least, I have to sell each individual copy. I have not succeeded in creating a buzz for either work. 

But, I’ve been doing mainly passive promotion. By that I mean: notices on my Facebook page; posts on this blog; posts at the Ozark Writers League Facebook page; a notice to my alumni magazine; posts at Conservative Arkansas Facebook page; posting notices on a couple of writing forums; adding links to my signature for e-mail and forum posting. All things I can do without interacting with a person. It’s out there, waiting for someone to see it. The Facebook posts on other pages took a little chutzpah, but still I would consider that passive marketing. And, I’ll make sure I have a mention of the book and a link to where to find them in our Christmas letter. After all, it’s big news for the year. 

I believe I can safely assume that passive marketing won’t result in many book sales. If I really want to create a buzz for either of these works (though I’m clearly more interested in promoting the book than the short story) I’m going to have to move into active marketing. That will require me to contact real human beings, either in real life or on-line, and either ask them to buy a copy of my book or to help me promote it through an interview or a speaking engagement. I have three or four ideas on how to accomplish this active marketing. One is to research blogs that might want to promote the book. This would be political blogs (more conservative than liberal) and USA history blogs. Another is to contact local civic clubs—Kiwanis, Lions, Civitians, Rotarians, etc—and see if I could speak at them. That requires research, however, to find out who does the speaker scheduling and contact them. 

Today I did some of the research needed for active promotion. I did a search for history blogs and American history blogs. This provided a lot of links, many of which were to abandoned sites or blogs that really wouldn’t apply. In 20 minutes of searching I found one US history blog where the owner encouraged publishers to submit books for review on the blog. I don’t know how he feels about author published books, but I went ahead and e-mailed him, and am now waiting. I suppose next week I’ll begin the process of the civic clubs. 

All this is not comfortable to me. I was raised to not toot my own horn, to let others praise when justified. Now, I have to go out and shout, “Hey! My book is worth reading, worth $10.00 in dead-tree format and $1.25 in pixel format. Buy it, buy it, buy it. How well I do this, and for how long, will likely turn out to be the biggest test of my writing career. 

Stay tuned.

Church History Novels, Doctor Luke's Assistant, Documenting America, Short Stories, Writing

Stewardship of Writing Time

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Thanksgiving week was not expected to be a time to get much writing done, and I didn’t for the first part. Our daughter and son-in-law came in with the two grandsons (3 and 1) on Sunday evening, then left the kids with us as they went on to Eureka Springs for a couple of days at a resort, courtesy of their church for pastor appreciation. Watching these two little boys didn’t lend itself to writing.

And actually, for the week before they came I didn’t write much, as the house needed a good release from clutter and dust and accumulation of months of having no visitors.

But the kids left Friday after Thanksgiving, my mother-in-law left on Saturday, so the house turned quiet real fast. With leftovers galore, even food preparation time was greatly reduced. So I did find some things to write, and ways to futher my writing “business”. Here’s my status right now.

  1. Last night I finished reading Doctor Luke’s Assistant, and have marked 60 or so typos and that many other places to make a few improvements. My goal is to e-self-publish this as soon as I can get the edits done, format it for e-books, and have a cover made. I suspect it will be ready in January some time.
  2. The print books of Documenting America arrived! Yesterday I found them at the office. They probably came in on Monday, but I never went to the mail area. I took some to Centerton yesterday when I went there and sold two. Sold one at the office also. I only ordered 20 copies to start with.
  3. I began writing my next short story, “Too Old To Play”. This is the next one in the Danny Tompkins short story series. The first one, “Mom’s Letter,” is available as an e-book. I hope to get this one available as an e-book as well. Again, having a cover made will be the hold-up.
  4. I’m reading a book titled Creating Unforgettable Characters, part of my continuing study of the writing craft. This is a little older, from the 1990s. It makes frequent references to characters in TV shows I never watched, such as Murphy Brown, and movies I never saw such as The Rain Man. But it’s pretty good. I’m gaining some new insights into fictional character development, even if I don’t fully understand the illustrations given.
  5. This morning (I’m home sick, the last stages of recovering from a stomach bug that hit me yesterday morning) I set up my writing business accounting spreadsheet. I entered the print book sales, entered the Suite101 income, and set up the expense tab of the spreadsheet. Maybe I’ll be ready to prepare my Schedule C when tax time comes.
  6. I wrote an article for Buildipedia.com and submitted it on the deadline, Nov 28. This is the first of a Q&A column on construction administration. It’s experimental for the on-line magazine. I have contracts for two columns, and I guess they’ll decide on more and the frequency when they see how these first ones are received. Let’s hope it works. I’ll be paid about 40 cents per word, which isn’t chicken feed.
  7. I completed an article for Decoded Science, another on-line source of potential writing income. I have not yet uploaded the article, as I have to first write short and long writer bios and upload a photo. Maybe I can do that today, and upload the article tomorrow.
  8. Attended a meeting of BNC Writers. We were a small group, but did some good critiquing and planning. We may have one more meeting on Dec 5, then wait till 2012 to resume.

That’s about it. I have much to do with writing over the next two weeks. Our Christmas letter, edits on In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, the second Buildipedia column, finishing the new short story, planning for marketing Documenting America. Enough to keep me busy.

Documenting America

A Whole New World

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As I mentioned in the last couple of posts, last weekend I finished proof-reading the proof copy of Documenting America, and began the process of making the minor changes and uploading it to Kindle, Smashwords, and CreateSpace. For each of these, a review by the distributor organization was required before it would be listed. Those reviews have been completed, and all three distributors have it for sale. Through Smashwords, this includes Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo, and some others.

I also have for sale paper copies I order from CreateSpace. I haven’t ordered any yet. I was planning on deciding this week how many the initial order should be. I have one sold already, to a man who used to work at CEI, with whom I’m Facebook friends. He saw my notice and said he would buy a copy. That tells me maybe I can sell some. That also tells me I’d better find out what I need to do about sales tax.

But the bigger thing to figure out is: Now what?

I’ve been holding off marketing Documenting America, either as an e-book or paper book, because I was waiting on the paper book, and on correcting a couple of typos I knew of. All that’s done, and it’s time to get marketing. An occasional shameless self-promotion on Facebook is probably okay, not more often than once a month. But I need to do more. Here’s some of the things I’m thinking about doing.

  • dropping copies off at local coffee houses, designating them as copies to stay in the coffee house.
  • seeing if I could give a few to the nearby Barnes & Noble. Let them make the sale and keep the entire proceeds. Then, if those sold, maybe they would order a bunch from CreateSpace. Or course, if they agree to take them, I might steer a few buyers their way.
  • see if I could speak at some local civic groups: Kiwanis, Lions, Civitians, Rotary. Those that meet weekly are always looking for speakers. I have in mind a presentation I would make of the material, which could tie in nicely with the book, but not just be about the book.
  • research blogs and see if I can organize a blog tour for the book. Blogs about history or politics are where I’d go to. This is a key way for many authors to promote their books. Having never done it, I suspect just the research of what blogs to target and how to contact the owners and scheduling and follow-up, etc.
  • drop off paper copies at two or three local libraries.
  • then, after a couple of months, maybe see about some radio programs.

I’ve been thinking about the marketing aspects of this for a long time, and have blogged on it before. None of this is new. What is new is the feeling I have. It’s a whole new world now. My book is out, fully out. The time to plan my marketing is over. Time simply to do.

Documenting America, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Writing

Writing and Publishing and Promoting

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My two e-self-published works, Documenting America and “Mom’s Letter” languish, rated lower than 366,000th and 464,000th among Kindle e-books. One sale of each will bring them up to rank around 40,000. That tells me some 320,000 or so books have sold one copy since I last sold one.

I’ve posted both to Facebook, I think two times. I have a few new friends since I last posted, but probably not enough new to justify another post. I don’t want to become a spammer.

I haven’t wanted to do much on promotion of either one until I had the paper book of Documenting America in hand and ready to sell. While e-books will remain popular and even grow in popularity, the potential is still there to sell more paper books. The places I would like to promote them will present the chance for both e-book and paper book sales.

So I’m holding off on promotion until I can get the paper book done. I’m stymied on the paper book, waiting on a necessary item that I’m getting for no charge. Of course, so far I’ve received what I paid for. Eventually I’ll pay to get the thing done.

So, while I can’t publish and therefore can’t promote, I’m writing. Last week I added over 9,000 words to In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. The world is exhibiting very little impatience for this book, but I keep plugging away. Today marks two months since I submitted it at its 21,000 word point to an agent. I think that means I have another month to go before “no reply is a no” kicks in, though I’d better double-check on that. I’m still working toward a first half of October completion for it. After that comes at least one round of edits before I work on something else.

Documenting America, The Candy Store Generation, Writing

Time: The same old, same old dilemma

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I have only so many hours:minutes a day to devote to writing. Some days are more than others. At the same time, I have only so much mental stamina:physical stamina to apply to those hours:minutes. Sometimes the two don’t align. This weekend they didn’t fully align. After yard work Saturday morning, the first I’ve been able to do since the ehrlichiosis flare-up happened, I felt good. My knees hurt a little, but not too much. I ate, rested, did a few chores inside, then went to The Dungeon to write. Alas, physical tiredness overwhelmed the gray cells, and I got less writing done than I’d hoped. This continued into Sunday.

For the weekend, I think I added somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 words to “In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People”, bringing the word count to around 52,400. It was good to get past the milestone 50,000, but there’s still a long way to go. At 5,000 words a week, I won’t finish until around October 15. That’s just the first draft. I’ll then have rework and rework and rework to make it truly ready for submittal. Of course, by that time I hope to hear from the agent who has the partial.

Unfortunately, to achieve that much production given the disruption in the hours:minutes/mental:physical continuum, I had to neglect other writing chores. I neglected this blog and An Arrow Through the Air. I had to neglect freelance article writing. I’ve quit proposing articles to Buildipedia.com, even though that pays fairly well. I’ve quit writing for content sites, even though that pays a little. The content sites are not a big deal. I miss the money from Buildipedia. I also miss regularly posting to the blogs.

I’ve also neglected any follow-up work to Documenting America. I started on what might be the first follow-up work, The Candy Store Generation, as well as on a second volume of Documenting America. I’ve also pretty much given up on promoting the volume I’ve e-self-published. Sales have stalled in August after a promising up-tick in July.

Then there’s all the household things that aren’t getting done because they won’t get done if I don’t do them. Such as the over that only half works. Such as the microwave that no longer gives us full power. Such as the place way up at the top of the chimney, 30 feet off the ground, where the siding has torn away. Such as the skylight that’s leaking. Such as the painting that will be needed once the skylight is fixed. Such as my various piles of papers that aren’t as neat or hidden as they need to be. Such as the pile of bills and receives that need to be filed. Such as twenty other things I’m forgetting.

Time. There ain’t enough of it. To whom much is given, much is required. Unfortunately, I may be pretty much out of much.